Alias
by Slipstream
Summary: Timothy Drake exists only on paper. The third Robin is a pierced, cynical teenage punk from the wrong side of town. Meet Alvin Draper, big brother, superhero.
1. Part 1

  
Author's Notes: (and rather long ones, at that!)  
  
This fic is an Elseworld, a What if…? Based on the idea of the Alvin Draper persona. For those of you who don't know, Alvin (in the canon DC verse) is the name Tim Drake gives to the members of YJ along with Spoiler in lei of his true identity. He also uses Alvin's tough, street-wise personality as a disguise to get in on the underground of Gotham (sorta a teenage punk version of Bruce Wayne's Matches Malone.) I like the possibilities Vinnie presents as a character, so I created a universe where Alvin Draper is Robin, and Tim Drake is the alias given to YJ and Spoiler. Confusing? Just read the fic, and maybe things will sort themselves out.  
  
And one other thing. It seems that I'm doomed to get one character's name wrong in every fic I write (just ask Dina Drake from "He Knows When You've Been Fighting Crime…", Cassandra with no last name of "To Catch a Bird", and Kensuke Nagasaki of "It's Not Such a Wonderful Life." *shudders*) no matter how well I know the series. (And trust me, I KNOW Robin, Batgirl, and NGE, I'm just cursed, that's all!) Also, my spelling skills are seriously lacking, and grammar is not the reason I'm in GT English, so please forgive me all the little mistakes I'm prone to make that Spellcheck doesn't pick up. Call it artistic license.   
  
I do not own Robin, Young Justice, Batman, Alvin Draper, Tim Drake, or any apparition by anybody resembling a comic book character. They belong to the good people at DC, so please don't sue the struggling high-school writer, I need the money to purchase comic books that are the funds of the industry that I shamelessly steal characters from. However, I DO lay claim to Gena (cute li'l thing that she is) and Linda Faye, who is based on someone in real life who played a very important role in my early childhood. Love ya, Faye-Faye!  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
  
Alias  
By Slipstream  
  
All's quiet on the freeway. The occasional streetlight is the only thing that breaks through the darkness on the windshield, each light slipping silently over the black and red top of the car, a glowing globe that marks the miles gone and the miles yet to come. Even though the road is devoid of traffic, I still glance at the rearview mirror nervously. What am I expecting to see behind the headlights? The cops? Batman? But the only thing I see is the shiner gracing my right eye.   
  
It's rather late. The tiny dark head in the passenger seat fell asleep when her normal bedtime passed her long ago. But there'll be no sleep for me tonight. This is just the beginning of what promises to be a lifetime of late nights on the road. A lifetime that seems only to have begun a week ago….  
  
**************************************************************************  
  
"Vinnie?" A singsong voice asks as small fingers tug at my hand. Still signing the checkout sheet with my right hand, I turn and look at the two huge brown eyes set in a cherubic tan face with curly black hair pulled back into twin pigtails. The pouting, perfectly adorable face of my little sister Gena. "'Fore we go, c'n I get a cookie from Ms. Jodie, please?" She takes her other hand out of the pocket of her purple overalls and points across the room where a woman with brown hair and a white nurse's uniform is handing out Oreos to a crowd of five-year-olds.  
  
I smile. "Sure. But come right back. We have to go grocery shopping this afternoon." She nods seriously and then speeds off with a childish giggle.   
  
"It should be illegal for children to be that cute," says the large, grandmotherly-looking woman behind the counter.   
  
Watching Gena kick a boy for stealing her cookie, I nod in agreement. "It sure should, Ms. Faye."   
  
"How many times do I have to tell you? 'Linda' to you, 'Faye-Faye' to anyone below four feet tall. You're making me feel old." She smiles and puts the stamp on the sheet to confirm that Gena has left the Mercy General Hospital Community Day Care and Nursery. "By the way, Mr. Draper…" She laughs as I roll my eyes behind my sunglasses. "The county finally pulled enough money for us to take the kids to the zoo on Saturday. If Gena wants to go, you'll have to sign another permission slip."  
  
"All right," I say and scratch 'Alvin Draper' onto yet another sheet of paper, which she files into another drawer.  
  
"You know, I don't think I've ever had a young gentleman ever care so much as to take care of his little sister. How old are you, now? 14? 15?"  
  
"16, Ms. Linda."  
  
"Shaw! And growin' fast, too!" Linda leans forward and taps me in the chest with her pin. "But you listen here. I hear that anything, ANYthing, has happened to that cute as a button sister of yours, I will personally take it out on your hide, got that?"  
  
In the background I can hear a yelp and Gena shouting, "Hyyah! Take that! Now givvit back!"  
  
"Yes, Ms. Linda."  
  
Gena appears at my side, one pig-tail slightly askew, munching happily on a Double-Stuff Oreo, and we take our leave.   
  
An average Tuesday afternoon.  
  
****************************************************************************  
  
It takes four or five tries before the key opens the door to our apartment. One hand fumbling with the key around my neck, the other hand holding a large brown bag of food while my body blocks Gena from the sight of the arguing couple down the hall, we enter. The drab colors of one of the typical run-down urban housing of Gotham City greet us, leaking their gloom down the wallpaper and sucking the joy through the carpet. Sometimes it amazes me that humans can exist in such a cheerless environment, let alone thrive in it the way Gotham does. But we do, and Gena sets down her bag and heads immediately to her room, humming off-key all the way down the hall.  
  
I make room for the stuff we just bought by pushing aside the cans of beer and half-open tubs of dip in the fridge. Looking at the food, I feel good about Gena and myself for a while. God, I'm beginning to sound like an old mother hen, the way I go on. If the guys from YJ saw me like this, they'd laugh their butts off in my face. But still… I can't help but smile a little bit at the thought that we should be set for another week or so.   
  
If Jack doesn't do anything stupid, that is.   
  
Jack's our father. Legally, anyway. He doesn't get into the whole role of "dad" much anymore. See, the three of us didn't always live in this filthy apartment on one of the worst sides of Gotham.   
  
A long time ago, Jack Draper was a man not to be dealt with lightly. He had a wife, two kids, picture-perfect house in suburbia, and a secure job in a major company. But one fateful day, he decided to break away from the company and earn his family some "real money." When Draper Industries crashed and burned, he was only phased. Humbled, yeah, but still only phased. He moved us to a nicer apartment than the one we're in now in the city and got a job with Wayne Co. and began to work his way up. Times were tough, but he was still our dad, and we were still happy.  
  
Then Mom got sick, and things just fell apart. Even before she… died… he stopped seeing Gena and me as people. We were just ghosts to him, reminders of a time when he still had a wife, a job, a home. Mom seemed to sense that coming, though, and one day about a month before the cancer ripped her away from us, she sent Jack on a bathroom run with Gena, she was still a toddler then, so she could talk to me alone.   
  
"Alvin," she called, extending thin arms toward the place where I shuffled my feet uneasily in the doorway. "Come here." I hid my eyes behind my bangs, my hair wasn't long enough for me to start slicking my hair back yet, hating the way the off-green walls and dingy sheets seemed to swallow her. Even worse than the cancer itself was the hospital, with it's outwardly cheery appearance and advertising showing recipients of miracle cures walk beaming from it's glass doors while inside people rotted in reeking, air-filtered prisons.   
  
She took my hand and looked at me with her dark eyes, the only part of her that seemed to be alive. "Alvin, honey, you know I love you."   
  
"Yes, Mom."  
  
"And you know that I would never ask you to do something that you couldn't."  
  
Hide the pain. "Yes, Mom."  
  
She smiled softly, weakly. "Oh, Alvin. I'm so sorry. You've already grown up on us. Your father… your father isn't accepting the fact that I'm dying."   
  
I tried to turn away. Even though I was glad that she had always been honest with me, I didn't want her to acknowledge this.  
  
Her grip tightened. "Alvin, promise me you'll take care of Gena? That the two of you will never be apart? I don't think I could stand my babies not having each other through it all. Promise me that?"  
  
What could I do? I promised, and three weeks later she was dead.   
  
I love my mother, but she was never there those nights when Gena looked up at me with big round eyes and asked why Momma wasn't reading her a bedtime story.  
  
It didn't take long for us to fall onto hard times. Didn't take long for my father to stop being my father and for me to start calling Dad "Jack". He was gone almost all of the time, either drowning himself in a bar or just wandering the streets aimlessly. Everything was left to me, and I had to scrape together what little money I could earn along with what was left over after paying the hospital. My only blessing was that I only had to drop the last few weeks of school and for the rest of the summer and that I had all day to work and take care of Gena. I had no idea what I would do when school started.   
  
There's not a lot a teenager from the wrong side of town can do legally to make money. Heh. And the city council wonders why the rate of crime is highest among the adolescent breadwinners of Gotham. Even after doing all I could stocking shelves, washing dishes, and mopping floors, it was sometimes necessary for me to indulge in a little pocket swiping. Thieving from the thieves. If you were to put a tracer on any stolen valuable in Gotham, it's almost certain that it'd be re-stolen four of five times before it was finally pawned. The safest way to keep your wages was to wear a t-shirt inside out underneath your outer clothes and stash your cash in the breast pocket.   
  
Too bad this is a fairly commonly known trick.   
  
I was walking home from pulling a double shift at some small, greasy Chinese restaurant, shoulders hunched against the dirty wind that seamed to breath through the city, when I got this sudden, spine wiggling case of the creeps. Do you ever get that feeling sometime when you're alone, that while you're standing there looking stupid the fates are meditating on whether or not to screw your life up? Like when you're in one of those really old elevators and the car pauses for a moment to emit a tremendous moan, as if it were ready to break at any moment, or if you're waiting for a ride that never comes and never comes and you get that cold certainty that it's crashed and all the people you held dear were inside it and dead. Well, I do, and I did, right then and there on the corner of Robinson Park. It seemed that whether I wanted it or not, the fates had decided to through the largest monkey wrench they could find into my life.  
  
"Hey brotha, got a light?" He stepped out in front of me, ripped jeans and a puffy jacket so common of gangsters and gangster wannabes, his dark chocolate skin almost blending into the sunglasses he wore even at night.  
  
"Don't smoke." I backed up, already sensing trouble, only to hit another warm body behind me. Before I can react, muscular arms have my hands pinned and my neck in a chokehold.   
  
The street shark smiles his white and gold smile. "Too bad. 'S not the best habit in the world, sha, but it keeps a po' boy goin'. Tha's all we are, po' boys like youself. Guess you're just gonna hafta give us the money to get a lighter, huh brotha?"  
  
Crap crap crap crap CRAP! I didn't have to look around to know that there were two more of them and a little voice in the back of my mind, between listing off every obscenity it knew, kept reminding me that in this neighborhood, this city, nobody would come help me. I kicked at the shins of my captor but the grip only tightened. As my world started to grow steadily gray, I could distantly feel hands frisking my pockets for money.   
  
But then the pressure around my neck was gone, along with the hands pinning my arms. Without their support I fell to the ground, gasping and rubbing at what I knew was going to be bruises around my throat. Glancing upward, I saw one of the shadows come to life, springing with inhuman grace into a flying kick that knocked half my attackers to the ground. Some ran for their lives. One idjut was stupid enough to try to pull a gun on the shadow, and he quickly fell back clutching at the now bloody fingers of his right hand.  
  
The Batman had come to town.   
  
It all happened in a blink of an eye. Not the most dramatic of rescues, but then he moved so fast I guess that being dramatic wasn't that high on his priorities list. Beaten, cuffed, and gone before I even had the time to get my stupid self to say anything.   
  
I sat there gasping for a couple of seconds, getting my composure, before standing up and dusting myself off. Glanced around. Empty street. Never before had I been presented with such a wonderful opportunity. I headed over to the unconscious leader, rifling through a few purple pockets before I find his night's "earnings." Compensation for the ordeal I just went through. I spat on that gold-toothed face for good measure, before turning to leave.  
  
Right into the unmoving bulk of the Dark Knight. Shit.  
  
A growl came from somewhere deep inside the kevlar-encrusted demon. I didn't need any half-whispered story to know what I was experiencing first hand then: The Bat was big, and damn was he scary.   
  
"Little young to be stealing back."  
  
Where I found a voice to answer I'll never know. "Mom always taught me to share and share alike."  
  
He cocked his head to the side and his eyes narrowed a bit. "And what would she say if she knew what you were doing?"  
  
I gulped dry air and tried to look anywhere but his eyes. But I was getting good at hiding whatever hurt, so I didn't think he'd noticed anything (a.k.a.- prayed to God he hadn't.) "She wouldn't. She's dead."  
  
Did he… flinch? I hid the thought as he instead set his mouth in an even harder line. "And you dishonor her memory to get a few bucks?"  
  
"No. I'm just…" Why did this seem so hard in front of him, without my usual walls of protection? I wasn't trying to flaunt my sob story or anything. "…Just following her last wishes. Keeping my sister and me alive." One glance upward, then back to admiring the pavement I went. "Sir."  
  
There was a rustle of cloth, then a pressure that could have been a hand laid briefly on my shoulder, then nothing. "Maybe it won't always be that way," the voice rumbled.   
  
But this time when I looked up, the Batman was gone without a trace. Spooky. I admit it, I ran all the way home.   
  
****************************************************************************  
  
I'm knocked out of my remembrance by the soft beeping of the microwave. Open the door and stir the contents of a bowl of instant mac 'n cheese. I can do better than this, really, I can, it's just that cooking is not a skill required in the role of vigilantism. But I'm getting better at it. Really. No disillusions of Iron Chef what-so-ever.   
  
"Gena! Dinner!"  
  
The floor shakes as my over-energetic preschooler comes running before skidding across the linoleum in socks. Beat that, Tom Cruise. Gena plops herself into her chair and looks at the bowl I've placed in front of her. "Y'know Vinnie, I can't wait 'till I'm old enough to cook for myself."  
  
I take my fork out of a bowl of ramen and point it at her. "Just for that we're eating healthy tomorrow night."   
  
She giggles to show she was kidding and the rest of the meal passes as normal. She tells me about a nice old man who had brought puppets for them to enjoy, and did I know that Mary Sue Ellen had eaten a bug? A bug! It was a big one, too. She would have eaten a bug, too, but Ms. Faye Faye said not to. I tell her about some of the things that had happened at school, and she nods and listens before asking me what she asks me every night.  
  
"Vinnie, do you work tonight?"  
  
I slurp up the last of my noodles and reply as casually as I can. "Yep."  
  
"Will you come and kiss me goodnight before you lock the doors and windows?"  
  
"You bet. Don't I always?" I absently tug at one of her pigtails. "Why don't you go take a bath now?"  
  
If anybody were to ask what her big brother did to get them along, she would have said in the same careless tone, "Work." If they pressed further, she might reveal that "he runs errands f'r his Boss." If they were to ask what kind of errands, she would just shrug and say. "Dunno. He has to wear a uniform, though." For some reason, a lot of people think I work for either UPS or a drug lord. Go figure.  
  
But back to my story… It was a week before I saw the Batman again. A week spent as normally as possible in Gotham City. By Thursday, I had almost stopped looking over my shoulder expecting to see either somebody with a glittering gold smile or the Bat, so when I walked into our poor excuse for a living room after tucking Gena in, I was just expecting the chance to crash for a couple of hours. Which I did. Sorta. At about two in the morning, something, I didn't know what, woke me up. I looked blearily around the total darkness of the room. Hadn't I gone to sleep with a couple of lights on?   
  
The noise again. Fully awake now, I groped around on the coffee table for the knife Jack used to crack peanuts. Feeling the comfort of the wooden handle in my palm, I pulled the blade close to my chest and slowly scanned the room for signs of an intruder.  
  
"Put it away," a low voice from somewhere grumbles. "I'm not here to hurt you, and if I was you wouldn't get a chance to use it." A shadow steps out to silhouette itself in front of the window, blocking the rest of the light and revealing a tall figure wearing bat ears. Night-vision lenses glowed in the otherwise darkness.   
  
Slowly I placed the knife back onto the table. "W-What do you want?"   
  
He seemed to regard me for a moment and I suddenly felt very vulnerable from my position on the couch. "I've been following you. Watching you, the way you work, the way you operate."  
  
I stood and shoved my hands in my pockets. "So?"  
  
"I see something in you, something that reminds me of people I knew. People I know." His voice trailed off and he looked pointedly around the room and towards the area where Gena slept. "Is this how you want you and your sister to live the rest of your lives?"  
  
"Are you threatening me?"  
  
His eyes settled on me, and in them I could see, or maybe I could only sense it, the sadness that came from my retort. I could almost hear him think, Is this what it has come to?  
  
"No. I'm offering to help you. You're a good person, Alvin, I know that just from watching. You help others before you help yourself. Despite…. circumstances… you've managed to keep you're family together with qualities unseen by many of Gotham's youth."  
  
"What's your point with this?"  
  
"I'm wanting to make you my partner. To aid me in the war that's slowly threatening to consume this city."  
  
I let the silence drag out a little as I thought about what he meant by that. "You mean be the next Robin? I'm not so sure I'm into that. Sure, it'd be cool 'n all, but I know what the word on the street is on what happened to the last couple." My back was too him, but I could hear some small noise from him, which I ignored. "I'd love to do the hero/adventure thing, fight the good fight for God and country with all the other big supertypes, including you. But…" I took a deep breath and looked again in the area of Gena's bedroom. "I can't… I don't have the time to all of that and keep this family 'together.' Keep us afloat. And isn't that what you really want?"  
  
"You'd be compensated."  
  
"I don't *like* handouts," I growled. "I want to earn whatever I take. My father leaches too much off of us for me to do that to anybody else."  
  
Was that a… smirk? "Don't worry. You *will* earn your pay. Benefits, too. Not much in the days off category, I'm afraid."  
  
Looking at him, his seriousness, I could begin to see how that might just possibly work. A way to get Gena and me out of where we were, or a least help us in the future, plus revenge against the system we were imbedded in. "I'll think about it."  
  
But by the look on his face just before he melted into the shadows, I knew he knew that I meant, "Yes."  
  
**********************************************************************************  
  
Anywhere in Gotham, at about 9:30 in the evening, you will find almost a million people all doing the same thing. Checking their locks. Key lock, door jam, dead bolt, padlock, electrical security systems for those that can afford it. All double and triple checked before you can even think about going to sleep, and even then you may be plagued by the thought that it isn't enough.  
  
It isn't. That's why there's Batman. And me, Robin, the Boy Wonder.   
  
Almost funny, if you think about it.  
  
But along with the other Gothamites, I make the 9:30 round, although dressed in slightly different attire. After what happened to Jason, Batman decided that the short shorts and tunic weren't exactly up to par with the fire power being packed by today's generation of street thugs, so he gave the cape and boots a makeover. There's no green in my costume, for one thing. Black and red and gold, more true to a robin's plumage, make up my spandex. Black tights, sleeves, gloves, boots, and domino mask, along with a black on the outside, golden yellow on the inside cape that comes down to a point over the chest plate with a gold neck trim that laces down the front of the red tunic. Plus the mandatory utility belt and redesigned throwing "R." I don't think I have to mention the additional layers of kevlar.  
  
But back to the lockdown. With my connections to the Bat, our security systems are a bit more state of the art. Along with all the standard equipment, I've taken the liberty to installing motion sensors, body heat identifiers, silent alarms, and fail-safe locks on key doors in the apartment. You'd have to be me or another member of the Bat-clan to undo the alarm system after tripping it. Gena knows about it, too, just in case. That's what the whole system is there for, anyway. Her. Only her.  
  
Only one lamp is on in Gena's otherwise dark room, and it casts its soft light over the tiny space. Desk, bed, rug, stuffed animals, crayon drawings. Simple things. She's were she always is, propped up with pillows on her single bed, red covers scrunched around her, one arm clutching tightly to Henry, her love-worn lion, squinting in the semi-darkness at a picture book.   
  
"You want me to read that for you, sis?" I sit down on the bed and pick up the Goldenbook with gloved fingers.   
  
"I can read it!" she exclaims and pouts. Unlike what you'd think, she doesn't make that big of a deal about my costume. She can tell just by my actions when I'm "Alvin" and when I'm "Robin" by instinct, something I'm finding harder and harder to do myself. Absently she fingers the pouches on the backs of my gloves. That's her favorite part of my costume, she told me once, the pockets. Other than the cape, of course.  
  
"Tomorrow. It's late. I should be leaving, and you should be in bed."  
  
"All *RIGHT*!" she exclaims dramatically, flopping back onto the bed in mock despair. I pull the blankets up around her chin and rescue Henry, her stuffed lion, from his position between the wall and the bed. I can feel Gena's eyes following me as I make the quick loop around the room and to the window, checking that the locks and security systems are functional.   
  
"Vinnie?"  
  
"Yeah?" In the distance, the sirens take a pause in their constant screaming for the boom pop of gunfire to be heard.  
  
"Will you be careful for me?"  
  
The question can be veiled on so many different levels, and with its fearful innocence I'm torn between my street toughness and my street despair. Don't get hurt, it says. Don't get killed. I'm helpless, it says. Don't let me get hurt. Don't let me get killed.  
  
"You know I will. Don't forget your prayers."  
  
"I won't."  
  
One last absent tug at the covers and I give her a brotherly peck on the forehead. In two clicks the lamp is off and the Eyeore nightlight begins its tour of duty. "Good night, Gena."  
  
"'Night."  
  
I close the door softly behind me and make my way towards my room. Through the window, up the rusted remains of a fire escape, across the ledge, up the drainpipe, to the roof. Breathe in the dirty night air, hot and wild in my lungs, wind tugging clouds across the moon. Take a jump line from my utility belt, leap over the edge and into the abyss, feel the exhilaration of the first free fall, then the jerk and pull on my arms as the line goes taunt and gravity catches up with me.  
  
I'm free.  
  
*************************************************************************************  
  
-"Robin, this is Oracle. You read?"-  
  
"Nngh! Ggk!"  
  
-"…… Oh Rooooobin…. Pick up the com…."  
  
Sacrificing my shoulder to the fist of a thug, I take the split second to activate the com-link in my ear. "Unh…. I'm a little…. busy…."  
  
-"10-4, Pet Project. I'll give you a sec to wrap things up there."-  
  
With renewed intensity, and a bruised shoulder to avenge, I redirect my attack on the armed members of Los Lobos de la Casa Grande, known the few English speaking inhabitants of this neighborhood as the Big House Wolves. Three guesses which group of cellblocks the Big House is and the first two don't count.   
  
Gang warfare. Gotta love it.  
  
The big guy with the ripped leather jacket and a fist full of brass knuckles is my biggest problem. His scrawnier friends have me surrounded, limiting my working space to the point where I can't get behind him for the one well placed kick that would bring him down. Los Lobos aren't the stupidest of Gotham's underworld, they move together in a pack, forcing me to face all of them at once. I've already been fighting them for a while so I'm tired and generally pissed off. But Oracle's little intervention's given me a new meaning to the fight. These guys are so dead.  
  
Changing my fighting style, I drop to my hands and snap my feet up for a twisting scissor kick that connects under the jaws of thugs one and two. They drop their guns, and I manage to grab the pieces before they hit the ground. The steel is cold even through my gloves as I brandish them threateningly.   
  
"I'd go quietly if I were you," I growl, chambering a round in each of the guns for effect.   
  
The group of four gang members is uncertain. Word on the street tells them that the Bat never uses guns. That the Bat never kills. But the kid….  
  
Nobody's ever really said at what point the kid'll stop.  
  
Their second of indecision is all that I need. In two clicks I drop the clips and hurl the heavy handguns at two of the goons, knocking them square between the eyes. I use the same movement to spin into a kick that knocks the last regular crook to the ground and launches me up and over Giant. His reactions are too slow and I ricochet off the brick wall of the alley to land in the middle of his shoulders. My sudden weight sends him down and I whap him on both sides of the head for good measure. Jerk.  
  
I set about cuffing the gang and reactivate the com in my ear.  
  
-"Well, that certainly didn't take long."-  
  
"You know I hate that nickname, Babs."  
  
Laughter reaches my ears and I can imagine her sitting at her computer terminal, wrapping a strand of her red hair around a pencil and taking a sip of coffee from a Batgirl mug. -"Hey, don't get on my case. It could be worse. I could insist on calling you…"-  
  
-"Yo Chipmunk!"- I wince as a new voice, Nightwing's, squeals as it overrides Oracle's frequency. -"I'm in major need of an assist here! Main and Eighth, got that?"-  
  
Muttering to myself, I ignore him and talk to Oracle instead. "Just for that I'm not saving him."  
  
-"Sorry, kiddo, not an option. Short Pants is up to his fine ass in trouble and its up to you to get him out of it. Think you can handle it?"-  
  
"I'm already on my way. But he owes me for this one. Robin, out." I cut the connection and swing up to the roof of an adjoining building, just seconds before a thunderstorm of red and blue lights howls into the alley.   
  
As I run from rooftop to rooftop I ponder the enigma known as Dick Grayson.   
  
It was only after a few weeks of training with the Batman that he revealed himself to me as Bruce Wayne. I was cool with that, and not necessarily surprised, with all the evident cash needed to fund the vast underground complex of the Batcave. But knowing him originally as Batman, it was hard for me to call him Bruce. I mean, it's pretty evident that his true self isn't the bubbly playboy that he presents to the world, but I still have to think about it before I call him by name. And you think I have an identity problem…  
  
Anyway, the first time I met Dick was during training. Things were going pretty normally: Bruce was kicking my butt and I was getting my butt kicked. Batman may be one of the best martial artists in the world, but teaching isn't exactly his strong point. I rubbed at a sore spot on the back of my head from where my head had hit the mat, desperately trying to make the little birdies disappear from my vision, and blinked up at cave lights. Suddenly a shadow crossed my face and my sight was filled the upside down face of a young man with black hair, blue eyes, and a very unhappy, very shocked expression.   
  
We looked at each other for what seemed like a minute before I voiced the thought that was on both of our minds. "Who the hell are you?"  
  
He was silent for a moment, but then he turned around and walked away. I rolled up into a sitting position, mindful of the aches and pains my body kept reminding me of, and watched as he made his way to were Bruce was standing in his black belt and gi. He talked in a low tone, but I could still make out the words he practically hissed at Bruce. "Is this what you called me down here for?"  
  
Bruce didn't move, he kept his eyes on the newcomer, but his words were directed at me. "We're done for today, Alvin. You can go get changed."  
  
I took the hint and moved slowly toward the costume vault, glancing over my shoulder every few seconds to see what they were talking about. Whoever the new guy was, he kept watching me until he thought I was out of earshot before returning his attention to Bruce. I kept quiet and changed into ripped jeans and a black tee shirt quickly, then focused all of my attention to hearing the conversation that passed between the two of them.  
  
"-Sorry, Bruce. It's just that… after Jace, I thought you'd…"  
  
"It's been… long enough. Alvin is different."  
  
"Alvin, huh? Bit of a punk, isn't he? I know when I tried to grow my hair longer when I was his age you'd have none of it. And an earring. Interesting. What'd he do, figure out you're secret identity and beg to be let in on the Robin gig?"  
  
"No. I asked him."  
  
"You asked--? Jeez, Bruce, you just can't leave *anybody* to their own devices, can you?"  
  
"He has his priorities strait. He's a hard worker, as hard a worker as I've ever seen. I'm giving his efforts a more productive outlet."  
  
"Just another good deed for the day, huh, Bruce?"  
  
I'd heard enough. Question my worth, question my appearance, hell, question my morals…. I can deal with that. But hint that I'm being used, that I'm just some tool or servant, somebody's "good deed", and that's going too far. I walked over and stood somewhere behind Bruce, right in whoever's line of vision, and tried my best for the brooding look that dared to ask him to challenge me to my face.   
  
He and Bruce went right glaring at each other for a moment, but then he dragged his gaze over to me. "You!" He pointed at me. "How old are you?"  
  
"Fourteen."  
  
He shook his head, still not taking his eyes off me. "Bull. Not in Gotham, you are. How old do you *feel*?"  
  
I thought about it for a second, since I had no base for comparison, and gave it my best shot. "Thirty-five."  
  
He looked back at Bruce as if that made some sort of point. "See? You'd just be adding to that. Barely in high school and already middle aged."  
  
"Hey!" I shouted and shoved in between the two of them, generally fed up with the argument. "I don't know who you are, but I have just as much of a right to be in this as you do!"   
  
"Alvin," Bruce began slowly, his tone of voice indicative enough of tiptoeing around our two ticking time bombs. "This is my ward, Dick Grayson, a.k.a. Nightwing. He'll be assisting you in your training."  
  
The silence and tension in the air was so think you'd need a light-saber to cut through it. Dick turned away, muttering something that sounded like "I'll think about it…" and headed for the stairs.   
  
I fumed at his back for a couple of seconds, waited for him to get halfway there, and shouted, "And I wouldn't be talkin' 'bout my locks with that rat's nest you call a hair cut!"  
  
He turned around, face a mixture of emotions: anger, shock, and amusement. I wanted to flip him the bird, but Bruce was standing right beside me.  
  
Needless to say, Dick and I didn't exactly get started on the best of terms.   
  
But he stayed. Over the next two weeks, our relationship was detached and purely professional. I kick you, you punch me, we both roll around on the floor a bit and try to tear each other's eyes out… Professional. It probably would have stayed that way if not for one strange set of circumstances.  
  
School had just started, so I'd found a free community day care center at Mercy General for Gena to spend the day at. A lucky bit about that, too, the place was actually decent and not morally corrupt or using the kids as pack mules for an underground drug ring. Alfred had been picking me up after school, it's a long walk from Gotham City Central High to the Wayne Manor, and when I was done with training at about 6, he took me to pick up Gena. Gena and I either walked or took the subway from Mercy to home: a Rolls Royce was just too much of a risk in our neighborhood. All in all, the situation worked pretty well.  
  
But, it being Gotham, something crazy was bound to happen and screw the whole thing up.  
  
I used the scruffed up and gum coated pay phone in the lobby to call. Two rings, a click, and then Dick's voice came over the line, if slightly scratchy due to the connection. "Wayne Manor."  
  
I was thrown off a bit. Normally Alfred answered the phone. "Uh, hi. It's Alvin."  
  
His tone changed, he didn't distrust me as much as he had in the beginning, but he still held a grudge of some sort. "What do you want?"  
  
"Can I talk to Alfred?" I tried to ignore the faceless man passed out in the corner a few meters to my left.   
  
"He's not here. He's running errands right now."  
  
I rubbed the bridge of my nose and sighed, trying to think out other possible solutions to my problem. "Jesus. Okay. If he gets back anytime soon, tell him that I wouldn't have bugged him about this, being Saturday and everything, but Mercy's had to close early for an emergency and I can't take Gena back to the apartment 'cuz Jack's there and drunk as hell."  
  
"Mercy's? You mean Mercy General?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
There was a pause, and then he asked, almost carefully. "Who's Gena?"  
  
Oh. I forgot. I hadn't exactly had a civil conversation with Grayson in the fortnight I'd known him, so he had no real clue about my life outside the cave. The few times Gena had come with me on Saturdays to the manor she had stuck to Alfred like glue, so he probably hadn't seen her. "My sister. Look, I just need a ride, that's all."  
  
There's silence on the other end, and I pumped change into the slot so the phone wouldn't run out on me. "Can you not get a ride from anybody you know?"  
  
"Across the river without looking suspicious? You kidding me?"  
  
He sighed and the receiver transmitted it into a hiss of static. "I can give you a lift if you really need it."  
  
"Uh… yeah. Thanks."  
  
"Where do you need for me to pick you up?"  
  
"Um… I'll take the sub to Mercy. There's a coupla benches in the R. Kane Memorial Square across the street."  
  
"'Be there in half an hour."  
  
"Yeah, cool… Thanks."  
  
I hung up the receiver and exhaled in relief. See Vinnie? That wasn't so bad, now was it? I had to pass my unconscious friend in the corner, and as I did the stench of puke, alcohol and marijuana was so strong it gave me a headache. I was glad to be out in the open, if not fresh, air, and turned my path to the nearest subway station.   
  
Half an hour later, Gena and I were sitting in Kane Square, munching our way through a bag of peanuts, and listening to a nearby street-corner evangelist spread word of the gloom and doom that awaited us beyond the gates of life. A blue-black Stealth with tinted windows swung out of traffic and parked in the five-minute zone. "That'd be our ride," I said as I pulled Gena to her feet.   
  
Dick watched silently as I pulled the front seat forward and got Gena buckled and settled in the back before climbing into the shotgun seat and shutting the door behind me. "So," he began, maneuvering the sports car into a turn lane. "This is Gena?"  
  
"Yep. Say hi, Gena."  
  
"Hi. Wanna peanut?"  
  
I watched with an amused expression as Dick glanced nervously into the rearview mirror at the toddler in his backseat offering him a slightly rumpled paper bag. Thank God for Gena's overall cuteness. It looked like I wouldn't be doing much of the talking after all. "What?"  
  
"Dey're salted." She still held the bag forward, expectantly.  
  
"Uh, sure. Thanks." To his credit, Dick managed to grab and handful and keep the car on the road at the same time. He looked at me again, as if to ascertain that this was the punk he would be beating up later sitting in his car, and continued. "Mm. Good. Did Alvin buy these?"  
  
"Uh-huh." She had discovered the joys of a pop up ashtray and was busily pressing buttons in the back seat.   
  
"He takes pretty good care of you, huh?" Uh-oh. Where was he going with this?  
  
"Yeah. Hey!" She leaves the tray door alone, all her energies concentrated on talking. "Guess wha' we did yes'day!"  
  
"What did you do?"  
  
"Vinnie took me ta see Her'cles."  
  
"Hercules?" Dick was smiling, and I could tell he was laughing at me internally. "Did you like it?"  
  
"Yeah! It's really good! Her'cles 's a wuss, though."  
  
"A wuss?" He *was* laughing at me now.   
  
"Yep. I liked the… the…" She screwed up her face in thought, the leaned forward and tugged on the bit of my sleeve that was within reach. "Vinnie? What's the goat guy's name?"  
  
"Phil."  
  
"Oh! Yeah! Phil! I liked him."  
  
Shaking his head, Dick directed his next comment towards me. "I admire your courage. It takes a lot of guts to go to a Disney film with a… a…"  
  
"Three year old."  
  
"Three? Yikes."  
  
"It gets worse. I let her hold the 32-ounce Zesti we bought and she had drunken the whole thing 20 minutes into the movie. I kept having to take her to the bathroom. She didn't see half of it."  
  
"32 ounces?" He swivels his head again to look at her. "She doesn't look like she's even that big."  
  
"Never underestimate the holding capacity of a toddler's stomach." Oh my God, I realized, we're bonding. This could only be a bad thing.  
  
Dick seemed to have realized this at the same moment, because his next comment came quickly and with a tone that he was trying to wrap up the conversation. "I should introduce you to a friend of mine. Name's Roy Harper. He's got a little girl about that age. Bet you two could swap some stories."  
  
"Huh." A simple grunt, but it allowed him to be silent for the rest of the ride. Ah, the powers of male communication.  
  
Alfred was already back by the time we got to the manor, and Gena was lured by the tantalizing smell of his home made snickerdoodles. In truth, I wanted to go with her. I may look all tough and punk on the outside, but even I can't resist the allure of a decent cookie. And Alfred's are downright *sinful* they're so good. I had wondered briefly where he had learned to hone his art, Batman didn't seem the type to munch down a plate full of no-bakes, but you could never tell. My guess was that it came from taking the role of grandfather-figure to Dick, Jason, and now Gena and me.   
  
Dick and I sparred down in the cave for the remainder of the day, and for once, he seemed almost human. He was definitely a much better teacher than Bruce, offering little secrets and tips where as Bruce would just tell you to do it and watch as you tried to figure it out. Along with fighting, he was teaching me detective skills, something I found that I was fairly decent at. One thing I excelled at was tracking down information, following down loose ends, making connections. Dick even set up a dummy program to run a mock paper trail search. Given a few clues you had to shift through thousands of documents in search of what you were looking for. The thing even came with a versus mode, and Dick only beat me by a couple of minutes, not bad considering we'd been at it about two hours.  
  
"You're pretty good at that, kid," he laughed still gloating over the fact that he'd won. I got the feeling that his was a personality based majorly on accomplishment and competition.   
  
I offered him a half grin. "Have you ever tried to use the Gotham classifieds? You have to be to decipher those."   
  
"Only on cases, and then I had the computer do it for me. I tried to use it to get an apartment, once. Don't think I'll repeat that ever again."  
  
"You want an apartment here the best way to get one is by word of mouth. I know a coupla guys that specialize in that. You tell them what you want- cheap, lavish, private, unnoticeable, whatever- and they can get it for you."  
  
I could practically see his vigilante brain beeping an illegal warning at him. "Friends?"  
  
"Naw. Never said that. Besides, the whole thing's legit, depending on what kind of apartment you want."  
  
"And what would be the illegal ones?"  
  
"You ever been to the high priced flats on the upper north side? You've gotta do something akin to selling your soul to the devil to get on the in list for those joints." I leaned back in the swivel chair and started to fiddle with my earring. It's a nervous habit I picked up from when I first got it pierced, twisting the simple gold stud on my left ear and clasping and unclasping it.   
  
He nodded in agreement. "I'll look into it." He continued to look at me, but my mind was starting to wander, drifting off to thoughts of which war was ended by the Treaty of Ghent, exactly which Jackson was a colonel during the Battle of New Orleans, and why the hell America had gotten involved with the whole mess. Stuff I would need to know for the history test Monday that I was neglecting to study for.   
  
"Are you implying anything with that earring of yours?" He finally asked at length.  
  
I stopped twisting my earring and stared at him. "What do you mean by that?"  
  
He couldn't hide the smirk that crossed his features. "Nothing. Just kidding."  
  
I glowered at him and retorted. "Are you implying anything with that costume of yours?"  
  
That wiped the smirk off of his face. "What do you mean by that?"  
  
It was my turn to grin. "I'd like to say I'm just kidding, but jeez! You are in major need of a costume redo! At least you got rid of the green underoos…"  
  
"Alvin…" he growled in warning.  
  
"…But still, what's up with the Elvis collar? Seriously, you're whole outfit looks…"  
  
"ALVIN!"   
  
I shut up, knowing I had gone too far.   
  
He sighed, rubbed his temples, and appeared to speak. He stopped himself for a few minutes more, and after a few more of such pauses, he gave in and just said what was on his mind.  
  
"Alvin, look. I know we didn't exactly get started on the right foot, so to speak…"  
  
I snorted. Even though I didn't dislike him as much as I had, I still wished I'd've flipped him the bird. It's not every day you get such a good set up at an opportunity like that.   
  
"…But that mainly had to do with me. I never gave you a chance, took up hostile ground against you the minute I saw you, mainly because you remind me a lot of Jason, and that's my fault. I've gotten to know you now, and I know that you're different. Very different. Different from me or Jason or even Bruce when he was your age. You've taken on a responsibility bigger than being a super-hero by raising Gena, and have shown immense maturity at subjects I hadn't even begun thinking about before I was 17. Getting a job, an apartment, feeding myself without support from others."  
  
I knew that he had left under difficult circumstances with the Batman, and that talking about them still left a bit of bitterness, and I almost expected him to stop, but he continued.  
  
"And I just wanted to say I'm sorry for judging you, and that I want to start over. To be friends. Is that possible?"  
  
Squinting at him distrustfully, I took note of every body signal he was broadcasting and decided to proceed with only a little caution. "Will you leave me alone about my hair and earring?"  
  
He grinned, a real grin. "Well, I'm not so sure. I will for the main part, but I do believe that brotherly teasing and noogies are par for the course." He extended his hand over the workstation. "Friends?"  
  
Rolling my eyes, I reached out and shook his hand. "Okay. Friends."  
  
The formality done, we both sat back in our chairs and looked at each other for a minute. Dick drummed his fingers for a minute, and by the way he was pursing his lips I knew there was something else on his mind.   
  
"How *did* you convince Bruce to let you keep the long hair?   
  
"I told him that it would be more suspicious to my 'friends' and Jack if I suddenly got a haircut and lost the stud and would compromise my identity more than a punk Robin would. Besides, whether Bruce thinks it or not, Gordon knows about the difference in Robins, and I'm doing him a favor by not hiding it." An evil thought popped into my mind and I put on a pouting expression. "But he did put his foot down about the nose ring, though…"  
  
Dick's face took on the expression of a fish out of water. "You had a nose--?!"  
  
I never did tell him whether I did or not.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
To Be Continued….  
Alias Part 2  



	2. Part 2

Title: Alias 2/3  
  
Author: Slipstream  
  
Rating: PG-13 (for language mainly)  
  
Notes: Sorry about the inexcusably long delay between posts. I found most of this second part in a random jumble of files stored on my old computer, so if you spot some discontinuance of style, the span of time this is written over is to blame (which, just to give you an idea, is long enough that Tim Burton's remake of 'Planet of the Apes', a movie I allude to in here, was still fairly recent.) So some of the culture references are a bit old, but not so much that I don't think they fall out of place. Also, I have not read any of the current comic continuum for the last year or so, so any key events that happened in cannon since then I am oblivious to, thus they won't make an appearance in this fic. Besides, this is an Elseworlds anyway. :) As always, enjoy.  
  
~~~***~~~  
  
Babs was right. The facet of Los Lobos that I just fought was only a small fraction of what I find Nightwing facing. Over 30 gangsters. All armed to the teeth. All fighting each other and Nightwing alternatively. I think I can spot at least four different sets of colors scattered among the group.   
  
Dick looks like he needs a breather, so I time my landing to knock out one of the thugs circling closer to him. "Heard you needed a hand."  
  
He smiles at me, the dangerous, half-impish 'boy-isn't-this-fun-but-I-hope-we-don't-die' smile that he gets when he's on an adrenaline high. "Took you long enough. What'd you do, try to hail a taxi?"  
  
We're fighting together, the banter never stopping, as smooth as a machine. The best thing about becoming Robin, I think for the zillionth time, has to be gaining an instant big brother. "Nah. Everyone knows the D-Train is slower." I snap a kick into a passing torso, working my way around in a ring in hopes of disabling more with less movement. Bat-a-rangs, smoke pellets, puke bombs, and flash-and-bangs fill the night, and soon the situation is turning our way.  
  
While 'Wing cuffs the last of them, I make the rounds to see if any are familiar faces. I sort out the known juvies for Gordon, if I have time, and I'm treated with a good load tonight. At least 12 are under-age, eight people I know from Gotham High. Should have stayed home, L.C., how are you going to take the Trig test Thursday with a broken hand? Hope you don't mind explaining the shiner and gang-sign to Coach Lueders, Raymon. I bet your suburbia girlfriend Ari loves kissing those split lips, Scott. The benefits of a public education: go places, meet new people, beat them up, arrest them.  
  
"You coming?" shouts Nightwing from a rooftop, and I have to scramble to meet him before the cops show. We stick around a while to make sure none of them get away, enjoying the momentary breather in the chaos of the city.  
  
Dick's on my right, and as he looks over to say something, I guess the light hits my right earlobe just right for him to notice…  
  
"Hey! You got the other one pierced!"  
  
I smile. My earrings are one of my few vanities. If guys are even allowed to have vanities. "Yeah. Cool, huh?"  
  
"Other than the fact that it balances your head, I have one question. *Why?*"  
  
"For her birthday Gena wanted to get her ears pierced, too, but she was scared it might hurt, so I got the other one done at the same time to ease her fears kinda."  
  
He snorts. "You're just using that as an excuse to justify your craving for more jewelry."  
  
I pout. "The chick at the counter that did it thought it was cute. Even gave us a discount."  
  
"Ah. A girl enters the scene. It makes sense now." He waggles an eyebrow in that annoyingly frustrating way that only he and Superboy can and pokes me in the arm. "C'mon, bro, fess up. Who is she?"  
  
Swatting the poke away, I continue to watch the cops cart away our victims. "Shut up, you. She's a friend of Star's that works at a store in the mall that I know uses *clean* needles, otherwise we'd've gone somewhere else."  
  
"Uh-huh. Right." Eyeing the new hole in my body, he adds. "Hope those don't get pulled out in a bitch fight. That would hurt."  
  
"No shit, Sherlock. That's why they're studs, and not hoops." I think a moment about my other earringed super-friend. "Do you think I should let Superboy in on that little trade secret?"  
  
"Nah. Let him learn. It'll do him good." He tosses out a decel line and it's a race to catch up and hear his words above the wind.  
  
"By the way, Bats just called. Want's a rendezvous to 'talk.'"  
  
I groan. "You know what that means. One of us is in some major trouble with the Boss."  
  
"Well I know *I'm* innocent. I've been busy kicking butt the last half an hour. I don't know what you've been up too."  
  
"Why does he end up always mad at *me*?"  
  
"Why do you always end up dragging *me* into it?"  
  
~~~***~~~  
  
The Bat is mad. Oh yeah. Very mad. I know this because he's not where he said he'd meet us when we get there, which means that he's somewhere on the roof, waiting to jump out and scare us.  
  
"You used a gun." The Voice growls out from behind me, making Dick and me jump. Batman doesn't even bother to acknowledge Nightwing, his blank eye sockets focusing all their burning intensity on me instead.   
  
Yep. It's official. I've screwed up.  
  
"I didn't *shoot* them," I defend, folding my arms and staring at him in what I hope is some sort of conviction.  
  
He doesn't move. "I talked to Jessie Mark. He almost didn't cooperate on the gun shipment exchange because one of his boys said you pulled two guns on his crew."  
  
"They were their own stupid guns that I knocked out of their stupid hands and then hit them upside their stupid heads with. I didn't shoot them."  
  
"Mack said you loaded the guns and threatened their lives. It doesn't change anything."  
  
Frustrated, I throw my hands up in the air. "And so you automatically believe the sleazy weapons and crack dealer over me… God, it was an intimidation technique! Haven't you ever heard of playing bad cop? Oh right, I forgot. You're the one who taught me."  
  
"But your training, at least from me, did *not* include the usage of firearms," he growls.  
  
At this last comment my eyes automatically slide to the person who did teach me to through as well as shoot a gun, who is currently trying to sneak off unnoticed. Batman follows my gaze and freezes Dick in his tracks with a noise from the back of his throat.   
  
Dick covers his retreat well by putting on an expression similar to Bruce's. "What?"  
  
"You know perfectly well what 'what' is."  
  
He sighs. "You gave surroundings and size advantage training responsibilities to me, since I had experience with that body-type from when I was Robin. Which also covered turning available objects into weapons, guns included. And throwing something that oddly shaped accurately takes a lot of practice."  
  
"But no shooting."  
  
"Once again," I interject. "May I remind everyone that I did *not* shoot them." It doesn't help. They continue to ignore my input.  
  
"Advanced aim training. Plus training in the use of tranquilizer guns, bat-a-rang wrist launchers, de-cel lines, and laser targeting on small objects. Using similar shaped firearms are good training for all of those."  
  
"There's no excuse. We do not use guns." I know that tone. It's the "End of Discussion, so Don't Even Think of Questioning Me or I'll Kick Your Teeth In" tone. He looks at me now. "Tomorrow. Cave. Training."  
  
Training. Noun. Means of physical torture and mental humiliation rendered upon the subject by the Dark Knight and his newest, most deadly obstacle course as punishment for the subject having screwed up.   
  
"Can't. Wednesday. YJ meeting."  
  
"Cancel it."  
  
"Another can't. Second meeting of the month, that means a 'surprise' JLA inspection."   
  
Thank you, Superman. You've saved my life, or at least delayed it a little longer, more times than I can count.   
  
"Alright then. Thursday. Cave. Training."   
  
Believing he is off the hook, Nightwing turns to sneak off of the roof. "And you. Cave. Tomorrow. Training."  
  
"Man…" Dick whines, low enough to where I could only hear. "And I didn't have anything to do with it."  
  
~~~***~~~  
  
"Any other orders of business? No? Okay then. I officially declare this organized meeting of Young Justice over."  
  
"Yes!" Kon-El crows, literally flying out of his seat. "TV's mine! I call the grunge special on CDTV!!!"  
  
I smile to myself, thinking that I'll have to either tape it or join him for the Best of Nirvana segment. It's good to have a family that, though still dysfunctional in every way that the Bat-family and my home life is, is more dysfunctional in a happy way. Whatever that means.  
  
Cassie sits down, sighing a little in nervousness. "I'm never gonna get used to that. Public speaking *and* being the responsible one. Who'd a' thunk they could have such a combined effect on one's digestive system."  
  
"You're doing a great job, Cass," I assure her and stretch in my chair. Originally, when it was just us three guys and early into the history of the girl's with YJ, I was the main leader. But things kept happening so that I had to spend more and more time away from the team, a little event known as "Sins of Youth" popped up, and… well… Cass and I just decided that a joint leadership was in order. Hell, the JLA does it, so so can we.  
  
"'M just glad da' GL decided tha' he had more importan' things ta' do than hang aroun' here baby-sittin'." Anita reaches for another sugar and cream packet to dump into her coffee. It must be her first cup of the day, or this afternoon, for that matter: her accent gets stronger the longer she goes without caffeine.   
  
A blur of wind and a tangle of yo-yo's later the unruly mop of chestnut hair that is Impulse appears before us. "Green Lantern was here? Huh? When did that happen?"  
  
Cassie laughs. "Right about the time you got the hankering for a Korean seafood burrito. He was gone before you could find somebody who spoke English to make it."  
  
"Oh." And then, completely at random, "I wonder what's going on in Antarctica?"   
  
Being Impulse, he's gone to find out before anybody so much as lifts a finger to warn him. We're used to it.   
  
I make my way to the beat up, well-worn YJ couch and plop myself down in time for a commercial break. Just my luck. Kon takes the initiative, though, to grab a couple of Zestis out of the fridge and a bag of barbecue potato chips, cranking the volume in anticipation of the rock genius to come.   
  
"Bliss…" he mumbles and takes a huge, burping swig of his soda. Just past his shoulder Cassie buries her face in her hands.   
  
The television chooses this moment to air an overplayed advertisement for the 13th in a series of bad music of the 90s collection CDs. Seeing for the bijillionth time the same snippet of a music video with the same band that blended into the same genre, I comment to the general air, "Y'know, I wonder… If I started a shock rock band that didn't record anything original and complained about capitalism while going on international multi-million grossing tours and moaned about how sucky my life was on 'Behind the Music,' would I make enough money to get out of the hero biz?"  
  
Not even taking his eyes off of the TV, Kon quirks a smile and raises his coke. "This from the guy who beats the crap out of dummies in the gym to Drowning Pools' 'Bodies'."  
  
"Shut up, Mr. Sings-Otis-Redding-While-Fighting-Super-Meanies."  
  
A BBQ coated chip barely grazes pass my nose. "It's called 'intellectual irony,' Birdboy. Nothing screams good guy vs. bad guy like a round of 'Try a Little Tenderness' when you're knocking a guy's teeth out."   
  
The air currents in the room change again, and Bart's back, carrying a stuffed penguin, a bunch of flags, a big bag of ice, and a copy of the Happy Harbor Harrier. "Hey, guys, look at THIS!" He fumbles with the newspaper, rips it, frantically tapes it back together, folds it some more, and finally thrusts a beat up corner into our faces. "Let's see a movie!"  
  
This draws the attention of the entire team and we group around the clipping. "That's a pretty good idea," Cassie says, taking the paper and reading through the listings. "We haven't done anything 'fun' in a while."  
  
Bart is bursting at the seams with enthusiasm. "Yeah! Let's do it! We could all go… the non-superhero us, I mean… uh… y'know… the normal people who don't wear masks… yeah… uh… But we could do it! And Cissie could come, too!"  
  
"What are they showing?" I ask and slouch into as comfortable of a position as my cape will allow. Costumes were just not made for chillin'.   
  
"Uh… lesse…" Cassie scans some more, then starts to read. "There's 'Planet of the Monkeys.'"  
  
"Seen it," pipes up Anita, glancing forlornly at her now empty coffee cup. "Starred an ex-New Guy on the Block. Next."  
  
"'Whitey and his Mind-Numbing, Song-Filled Adventure.'"  
  
"Yeah! Let's see that!" Chirps Bart. Glancing around at our faces, he adds hastily. "Uh… never. Let's never see that. Yeah. Uh… next."  
  
"A re-showing of 'Cannibal.'"  
  
Kon shakes his head violently. "Uh-uh. After seeing it the first time with Tim and Lobo, and being severely disturbed in the process, never again will I be able to watch that."  
  
I raise an eyebrow and down the last of the Zesti. "What was so damned disturbing about that?"  
  
"When that guy got the top of his head sawed off… and Cannibal dragged him off to make coffee, you LAUGHED!!!"  
  
"Lobo laughed. I merely snorted and turned my mouth up slightly at the corners."  
  
"In the bat-family, that counts as rolling around on the floor slapping your knee, Robster."  
  
"Shut up."   
  
Evidently this has been bugging SB for a while, 'cuz he doesn't stop there. "AND not only did you laugh at a guy missing the top half of his *skull*, but when the faceless guy in the wheelchair said, 'It seemed a good idea at the time…" you laughed then *too*!!!"  
  
"It was the way he said it that made it funny."  
  
"No. Uh-uh. Only a person with an extremely warped, morbid sense of humor, which we now know you possess, could find that even remotely humorous. I'd have thought that living in Gotham would have hardened you against that sort of thing, but evidently the Arkham craziness has made its way into the local gene pool by osmosis."  
  
Silence for a bit. "Ooookay then, no Cannibal. Besides, Imp's too young to get it and still retain his innocence," observes Wonder Girl and she continues to scan the paper. "Hey! What about 'Ghosthackers 10: Return From Hell?"  
  
I just take a good, hard look at Secret, who's floating oblivious to the conversation in the corner, long enough for everybody to get my point. The movie is passed by without further comment.  
  
"Dis sucks," Anita sighs. "Y'd think with all dis variety tha' ya could at least have one good movie."  
  
"Wait! I've got it!" exclaims Wonder Girl. "'Goolander II'!!!"  
  
"Dude! Yeah! It'll be great, and I betcha ten bucks one of the super-hero spoofs reminds us of someone we know." Kon is already warming up to the idea.   
  
"When do we want to go? Today? Tommorow? Friday?"  
  
In my head, I run down my schedule. Thursday I get to have my ass kicked in retaliation for my behavior yesterday. Friday I have patrol and a date with Star. Saturday Gena goes to the zoo…  
  
"How 'bout we catch a Saturday matinee? It'd be cheaper and we'd miss the Friday night crowd." 'It'd also allow me a chance to go for once,' I add silently.  
  
Cassie nods sagely. "Yeah… yeah… I think that'll work. What does everybody else say?"  
  
"YES!!!" screams Bart. "M-O-O-N and that spells MOVIE!!!!"  
  
I can't help but smile. Bart reminds me of Gena sometimes. "I guess that's a yes then."  
  
Everybody goes back to doing their own thing, and I dig myself deeper into the couch. The sounds of the television and my friends fills my ears and my cheeks hurt from where I smiled. I wonder, almost guiltily, if I really deserve this escape from my reality.  
  
~~~***~~~  
  
"Heads up, Draper!"  
  
I can hear the whoosh of the basketball as it flies through the air, but I play the dumb, only mildly athletic, teenager and turn in time for it to whack me in the arm. Right on the spot where I got a bruise from falling off of the uneven bars last night at Bruce's.  
  
Ouch.  
  
"Christ, Tito! Give me more warning than that."  
  
Tito grins at me as I reach for the ball. "I thought your church had something to say 'bout taking the Lord's name in vain, Alvin."  
  
WHUNK! The ball slams into his chest. Show him. "Fuck off, Tito. Just 'cause I'm goin' with your sister doesn't mean I still can't kick your ass."  
  
He rubs at the spot and follows me through the crowds clustered around the cracked pavement of the GCPS 451 yard. "Jeez… whatsa matter with you? You look like shit. Act it, too."  
  
Miss Bertinelli gives our IDs a wave as we exit thought the rusted chain link fence. Hard to think of her as the Huntress, but then again, she doesn't think of me as Robin, mainly because I kept to the back of the room and slept through her class just to cover up the secret id.  
  
"Got into a fight grinding some stairs last night an' the stairs won." I pull up the sleeve of my shirt to show off the black bruise spreading across my shoulder, proof enough, to him at least, that I'm gutsy enough to shake off a 'skateboarding' accident.  
  
He's impressed. "Ouch."  
  
"'S what I said when it happened."  
  
"Shit."  
  
"Said that, too."  
  
He grins. "So… your battle scar enough to keep you away from the Park? Or are you just waitin' for Star to kiss and make it better?"  
  
"Shut up, Tito. And don't talk trash about your sister, much less MY girl. She can beat you up."  
  
The Park is a part of the Gotham Botanical Gardens built in the 60s in the hopes that its geometric squats of buildings and benches would better the city. The swimming pool was drained years ago for public health and has since been claimed by the gang-bruisers and skaters of the city.   
  
Star and Joel are already there when we walk up, Joel doing some basics off of the homemade plywood ramps scattered across the concrete while Star watches. She's wearing this tight, black, long-sleeved shirt with a fanged smiley face printed on the front and ripped, faded jeans, black and blond hair pulled back in a clippee and spiked appropriately, purple eye shadow and lipstick that goes with her nails.  
  
She used to wear mid-riffs a lot. But then she got shot, and now only bears her 'battle-scar,' as she likes to call it, when appropriate to show her toughness.  
  
I love her anyway. More, even. Battle scar and all. Just so long as she doesn't acquire any more.  
  
She spots us and waves us over with a smile. By the time we reach her bench she's dug a bag of corn chips from her backpack and offers them to us. Well, me at least.  
  
"Hey!" She smiles again. "How'd the rest of prison go? You do the biology lab with Seymour?"  
  
I swallow my chip and grin. "Yeah. Felt like Frankenstein experimenting on sea urchins like that. Here, have a chip."  
  
"How generous of you." She takes one. "We accidentally killed our urchin. Injected it with too much potassium chloride, I guess. Poor Bert."  
  
There's a thudding in the background as Joel hits the ramp wrong and crashes, a sound that does little to phase us.  
  
"Bert? You named the thing?"  
  
Star playfully swats at my arm and takes the chip bag away, handing it to Tito. He dives into it like a horse only to find it empty. "You bet we did. Gave it a proper funeral and everything. Full military honors, you should have seen it. Called in the English class from across the hall and had enough pieces for a twenty-one gun salute."  
  
"Ha ha. You hungry?"  
  
There's this sparkle in her almond eyes as she scrunches them up mischievously. "Starved. *Some*body ate my chips." She sticks her tongue out at Tito. He just grumbles and tosses the empty bag over his shoulder, where it misses the trash can by about ten feet. "Where do you wan t to eat?"  
  
Uh-oh. Loaded question. Best let the girl answer this one. "Your turn to pick, remember?"  
  
Ching! The look on her face says I made the right choice. I think I may be getting the hang of this boyfriend stuff. "How bout Chi-Chi's? We haven't been there in a while, and I'm in the mood for their Chinese nachos."  
  
Chi-Chi's is this place she and I frequent. Not the sharpest digs in town, but not too bad. They try. It's run by this Chinese guy and his Mexican wife, and they come up with some of the weirdest food concoctions for their buffet. Chinese nachos, sweet and sour chicken with jalepenos, fried corn rice with oriental shrimp and seaweed, that kind of stuff. It reminds me of Bart and his Korean seafood burrito from Wednesday and I almost laugh.  
  
"Fine by me. Ready to go?"  
  
"Hold on."  
  
While she's rounding up her stuff and giving Joel a few unneeded pointers on the best way to set a dislocated knee, Tito sidles up to me and looks at me gravely.  
  
"Now Alvin," he begins, trying to lower his voice like the announcers on TV, but it doesn't work quite right. "Being the good brother that I am, I am going to have to give you a little talk. My sister is to come home safe, sane, and in once piece in time to see 'Survivor.' You are to save her from the many creeps roaming the streets, including yourself, and act as if there are cameras everywhere manned by thirty cops just itching to bust somebody for public indecency and corruption of a minor. You are to provide all means of transportation, and, if she so desires, chocolate, because we are plain out at our house and I'm not making another run to the store for her today."  
  
Star steps up to my side and I slip an arm around her shoulders, snapping into a salute with the other. "That all, admiral?"  
  
He glares at his sister, and growls at me under his breath. "Don't forget the subway tokens this time, VINNIE."  
  
Star starts pulling me away before I can reply. "It's okay, bro. We're *walking,* and we're going to hold hands on the way there."  
  
"You guys are sick!" Tito shouts, and Joel grumbles at him to shut up and get a sex life. But it's okay. Star has one of those hands you can hold and not care much about anything.  
  
~~~***~~~  
  
Night. Patrol time for this little boy wonder. With Star returned home to her father's specifications (I may pull the super-shift, but he's really big and really scary and her dad, so I won't mess with him) and Gena tucked safely in bed, I head out on this weekend's mission. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get between Jack and the compensation check quickly enough, which means that I get to follow him around and watch him drink up the money. Yippee. If I'm lucky I'll get a justification to beat him up at some point.  
  
Jack's heading for one of the seedy bars he prefers that serves hard liquor for cheep without many questions asked. The type of places Batman scopes for murder suspects and gang thugs as Matches Malone. In fact, that's how I found out where Jack goes. I didn't give a damn where he went so long as he didn't bug us until Bruce commented on seeing him during one of his gang bust-ups.   
  
That woke me up. What if Jack brought home some unsavory characters? What if he owed some loan-shark money and forgot to pay? I could just imagine how big the bullet holes would be in the paper thin walls of our apartment. So I got the added chore of making sure Jack doesn't bring on too much trouble for himself and, consequently, us.  
  
It looks like I'll have to put my services to use again, tonight. This week's stop on the international seedy bar tour is O'Shank's, four walls and a roof held together by the eggs of a thousand cockroaches a mere hop, skip and a jump from the main strip of the red-light district. (As if any part of Gotham wasn't a red-light district.) Here Jack can stretch the Social Security check to its limits on cheep beer. Alcoholic math.  
  
I sigh as I watch him enter the door. The last time he was here there was a tussle and I went to school the next day with a new 'skateboarding' scar, a jagged little white line that runs down my left shoulderblade where a bouncer was so kind as to sink the disease-ridden blade of his knife into my back.   
  
The windows in the place are all boarded up, so I have to hunt and wiggle into a tight spot before I find some Quake damage that makes a decent skylight and peephole.  
  
"Frankie! Frankie, gotta cash a check!"  
  
The bartender, who's name isn't Frankie but will answer to it for enough cash, gives Jack an unsavory glance.  
  
"Get outta here, Draper. We got you're number after the last two times, you bum."   
  
Jack grins at him a little, swaying slightly. He evidently started the party without me earlier. "Aw… c'mon, Frankie… See? I even got the actual check with me this time…" He digs into his pocket, pulling out the said piece of paper. "Unsigned. One-Hundred-Percent pure grade federal aid."  
  
Frankie ignores him, turning back to another, equally unsavory patron. "Yer checks bounced *both* times, Jack. What kinda sick shit you into when a government check bounces?"  
  
I smile. My handiwork. I got back every penny Jack spent and the bartender lost the same in beer.  
  
The smile on Jack's face disappears and he stuffs the social security check back into his pocket. "Jesus Christ! Can't even get a fucking drink anymore. What a world, eh?"   
  
He glowers once more at the other customers, spits on the floor, and leaves. It looks like I might have gotten off easy, tonight, but I spotted the look the two punks next to Jack at the bar gave each other when he whipped out that check, and though Frankie may be afraid to cash it, I bet they're thinking of a list of people who aren't. As soon as Jack's out the door, they're tossing money onto the counter and moving after him like a pack.   
  
Paging Boy Wonder to Aisle Scum, you're needed to clean up after your father. Again.   
  
It takes a little maneuvering to back out of my vantage point, but I manage to unjam myself and get positioned in the shadows in the fifteen seconds it takes the Two Stooges to get to the end of the alley and look to see which way Jack went. In their moment of indecision, they don't realize how open they are to attack.  
  
The angle's too awkward for me to take them both at once, so I just grab the bigger one by the mouth and haul him back into the alley's darkness. This surprises them both long enough for me to land a few good hits to his torso and jaw, but then Stooge #2 wizens up and moves around behind me in a circle. They're shouting at me, spitting out curses between mouthfuls of blood and spit, and I'm forced to divide my attack. I can't do close up fighting with one without leaving myself open to the other, so I whip out some miniature bat-a-rangs from my utility belt and let fly.   
  
Most of them hit true, but something else has gone wrong. I'm still a little out of it from the beating my body took in the Cave yesterday, and I realize too late that it was seriously stupid of me to hit the street while not running at 100%. The sweep of my arm threw my upper body out of line, easily corrected except for the fact that my feet are finding nothing worth gripping and now I'm scrambling for balance and in perhaps the worst fighting position ever devised. The thug closest to me seems to sense this and he shoves as hard as he can, sending me sprawling, and time seems to slow as he reaches into the back of his pants and pulls out a gun.  
  
Oh crap.  
  
The first shot slams me hard in the chest, the force of it picking me up and spinning me around in an arc. The second actually 'pings' as it hits my 'R' and clips across my left shoulder, leaving a gouge that's deep and hurts like hell but not life-threatening. The wind's knocked out of me, though, and if I wasn't on my back earlier, I am now. And not getting up any time soon.  
  
Satisfied that I'm down or scared that their shots will bring others into the fray, my would-be prey takes off, but not after Jack. They seem to have forgotten about him for now. Not that I care one iota. Go ahead, track him down, shoot him, whatever, I think I'll just lay here a bit longer and concentrate on not passing out.  
  
Oh. Pain.  
  
My reverie is broken by the barkeep opening the door long enough to shout to shut the hell up and take the gang war somewhere else. I think for a moment about just ignoring him, but then he disappears inside and comes out with a twelve gage. My world is flooded with yellow light and I manage to crawl into the safety of a pile of garbage as the bartender fires a warning shot into the alley. A few of the foraging rats jump but most just give me the evil eye but go right on eating. I'm trying hard not to think about the possible implications that has of what I'm sitting in, but the smell is making it nearly impossible. Please don't make me puke, I pray, I don't think my ribs can take it.   
  
As soon as the door shuts again, I stumble out of the alley into the cool night air, grabbing choking lungfuls of cool air. I stink and my chest hurts and my arm stings and you know what, screw following Jack for the rest of tonight, I'm going home.  
  
-Fin   
  
Concluded in part 3  
  
Notes:  
  
(1) "Whitey and His Mind-Numbing, Song Filled Adventure" If you spotted that little reference, then congratulate yourself, you are now officially a Jhonen Vasquez junkie.  
  
(2)"M-O-O-N, and that spells…" is an allusion to Stephen King's 'The Stand.' Read it. Now.  
  
(3) This installment is in memory of Bert, the sea urchin who had one too many potassium chloride induced orgasms in the name of science. (Long story…) 


End file.
